In the context of telecommunications, certain approaches have been developed to provide differentiated data transmission service within a data network. Certain solutions are broadly grouped under the name Quality of Service (QoS) which is a term often used to refer to a number of different data-delivery guarantees or resource reservation control to achieve different levels of service for some particular data. Packet-based networks such as the Internet tend to employ best-effort forwarding strategies whereby packets travel through the network with no particular guarantees regarding travel time or jitter. Certain network services or traffic types, however require or would benefit from certain guarantees or preferential treatment, and systems have been developed to provide higher priority for certain packets and to guarantee certain QoS standards for traffic that is more sensitive.
However, providing improved service levels for certain packets adds a burden on network resources such that it is not usually possible to maintain the highest levels of service for every packet travelling through a network section. In this context it is necessary to limit the assignment of “high-priority” to only packets associated with critical services or services that require a high service level. Access to high-priority service levels is usually restricted only to certain data, with the goal of ensuring that the demand on network resources imposed by high priority data does not surpass the availability of the network resources. For example, in order to reduce the possibility of excess demand for network resources, priority levels are usually conservatively assigned and certain services, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, that would otherwise overwhelm the network are frequently “choked”.
However, existing methods for subsequently varying service level are cumbersome and/or intrusive, or do not involve customer control. Accordingly, there is a need in the industry for improved methods and systems for permitting service level modifications.